Thursday, 3 March 2016

Our Current DIY plans

I think it is safe to say that the DIY bug has well and truly hit me, and I more often than not go to bed with a head buzzing with ideas. DIY is in my dreams, I can't avoid it! My laptop has never had so many tabs open...

Part of me knows that I have to address tasks in an orderly fashion; May/June time will see the carpet from the hallway, living room and dining room get removed and replaced with wooden laminate flooring. I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to this event. I often say to Rob at the weekends that I am ready to rip it up and burn it, but in an old Victorian property, the chances of the floorboards beneath being at all decent is relatively low. So, we have to hang on in there and just put up with it.

While some modern houses can have teething issues, period properties have a greater degree of hidden costs particularly if they have lacked TLC. Begin to peel something away and you will find a myriad of jobs which need to be addressed and you wonder why you were so curious anyway. That has happened to us a few times. I'm not in love with our house, but I don't hate it. I'm in a state of limbo, knowing what potential it has; it could honestly look really great and has some Victorian features still left such as the arches in the hallway. Once the new flooring is complete it will definitely lift my moods and general happiness in this house.

An example of the magnolia woodchip wallpaper, hallway arch typical of a property of this age plus an unnecessary blocked in hatch which I am not sure to do with until we block it up.

Over the course of almost a month I have been decorating my daughter Lily's bedroom. The walls upstairs boast magnolia woodchip wallpaper, which is a sight for sore eyes, so when I started applying white cotton paint to the walls and white eggshell paint to the skirting boards it was immensely satisfying to admire the colour difference. What was previously regarded as a fairly neutral tone, albeit a bit yellow under some lamp lights, suddenly became obviously nicotine-stained in appearance. As the project wore on, I got increasingly blinded by the freshly painted white walls and had to take breaks in order for my eyesight to adapt to be able to detect spots I had missed. Our colour scheme is very pure; just white cotton throughout and the reason is that the upstairs landing of our house has no natural light unless adjoining doors are swung open and sunlight is plentiful. Another reason is that woodchip wallpaper seems to absorb light so the lightest colours would work in our favour. We can always introduce colour and brightness via soft furnishings and wall art after all.

We have used mostly neutral whites throughout with the odd bit of Rustoleum winter grey chalk paint here and there